"If the Afghan economy is not resuscitated, the severity of the current humanitarian crisis will only deepen, with dire consequences for life and limb of ordinary Afghans," warned one aid group.
The US 20-year war and occupation in Afghanistan, waged to avenge the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, has taken the lives of more than 71,000 Afghani and Pakistani civilians.
Three Generations of Conspicuous Destruction by the Military-Industrial Complex and a New Cold War
"I can't think of a worse betrayal of the people of Afghanistan than to freeze their assets and give it to 9/11 families," said one person whose brother was killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
Washington and its allies have argued that sanctions are a necessary response to Taliban human rights abuses. But it’s the people, especially the poorest, who pay the price. How many women and girls should be sacrificed to punish the Taliban?
The plight of the Afghan people was crucial for pundits and journalists — as long as they had a war to defend. Now that US troops are gone, Joe Biden's sanctions are causing starvation and suffering — and the media has been astonishingly silent.
The topsy-turvy nature of the Trumpian version of the American century is something this country — and certainly the Biden administration — still hasn’t fully come to grips with.
The only way to save Afghanistan is solidarity of the progressive, democratic and secular forces. We want an Afghanistan free from fundamentalists and foreign intervention, in which men and women have equal rights based on democracy.
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